In multi-media communications, the transmission and use of video data may significantly increase transmission bandwidth and data storage requirements. In many instances, video data may be encoded, or compressed, in order to reduce the size of transmitted video data. Video coding and compression techniques may achieve efficient compression by reducing both temporal redundancies between video frames in a frame sequence and also spatial redundancies within a video frame. Examples of video coding and compression techniques are described by the ITU-T H.261, H.263, Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) 1, MPEG2, and MPEG4 standards, as well as the ITU-T H.264 standard and its counterpart, ISO/IEC MPEG-4, Part 10, i.e., Advanced Video Coding (AVC).
Temporal prediction in video-based compression, however, may increase latencies and delays across a communication network, because decoding devices may often need to wait for data contained in certain video frames in a sequence prior to decoding other video frames in the sequence. This can pose real challenges in real-time video communications. In addition, though various coding and compression techniques have been introduced that improve the amount or quality of compression, such techniques often are quite complex, causing significant power (e.g., electrical and/or processing power) consumption.
In battery-operated or handheld devices, power consumption can be a very important factor with respect to the usability of such devices. In many instances, a user may wish to prolong the life of a battery for maximum use. In addition, however, the user may wish to use the device for various video functions (e.g., gaming, video conferencing, video streaming), which can cause significant power consumption.